Slurry transport is a key material handling technology in a number of industries. In oilsands ore transport, slurry pipelining also promotes conditioning to release and aerate bitumen prior to separation. Reliability of slurry transport pipelines is a major ongoing problem for operating companies due to unexpected piping failures, even when conservative maintenance strategies are employed. To date, no accurate model has been developed to predict wear rates in slurry transport pipelines, although previous studies have shown that important variables include flow rate, slurry density, and particle size distribution.

This work investigates erosion wear mechanisms causing inner pipe wall wear due to sand slurry flow in a horizontal section of pipe under steady state conditions. A corresponding lumped-parameter erosion wear model is presented based on simplification of the physics of oilsands slurry flow. An apparatus was designed and developed to measure the forces acting on the pipe inner wall to monitor forces related to erosion in a laboratory-scale sand slurry loop, and preliminary results are presented with recommendations for future work.